Self Defense – A Geek With Guns

No True Gray Man

Through some twist of cosmic karma, there seems to be a universal rule dictating that any group of carry permit holders must discuss the concept of the gray man. Through an addendum to the universal rule, this discussion must always devolved into No True Gray Man where each participant points out why every other participant is failing to be a gray man.

The concept of the gray man seems simple enough. If you don’t want unwanted attention, you need to blend in with the general populace. This is important to many carry permit holders because they know that if a bad guy is able to mark them as a carry permit holder, then they will be the first target should that bad guy decide to act like a bad guy. Such a grizzly fate can only be avoided by becoming indistinguishable from the background mass of people, to become a gray man. The question is, how does one achieve the coveted status of gray man?

As a frequent (and almost always unwilling) participant in this conversation, I have learned the characteristics of the gray man.

The gray man does not wear tactical pants. The only people who wear tactical pants are people who are carrying a gun. No exceptions.
The gray man does not wear a tactical shirt. What is a tactical shirt? Any button down shirt that has pockets. Unless it’s not.
The gray man does not wear camouflage.
The gray man does not wear any clothing with an emblem of any firearm manufacturer.
The gray man does not wear hiking boots unless they’re in gaudy colors.
The gray man does not use a backpack with MOLLE webbing.
The gray man does not use any pack other than a fanny pack because all other packs scream that the owner is carrying a gun.
The gray man does not walk too fast. People who walk too fast attract attention and are easily identified as a man with a gun.
The gray man does not walk too slow. People who walk too slow are obviously trying to avoid attention and are therefore easily identified as a man with a gun.

If you do all of these things, you will blend in perfectly with the masses and by extent achieve the coveted status of gray man! Unless, of course, you actually practice all of the other things you’re told to practice such as keeping your head on a swivel, not reducing your awareness of your surroundings by wearing earbuds and staring at your phone, crossing the street to avoid an individual or group that you believe could be trouble, or otherwise maintaining any awareness of your surroundings.

The problem I have with most gray man conversations is that they focus almost exclusively on clothing. There is another, and I will argue more important, component of blending in with the masses: behavior. Go to a public place like an airport, mall, or the downtown of a city and watch the people. Take note of how they dress and behave. I can’t tell you how many backpacks with MOLLE webbing I’ve seen at the airport. Those backpacks aren’t unique to carry permit holders. It’s fall here in the Midwest, which means it’s jacket season. Here in my rural community I see countless people wearing camouflage jackets. They don’t stick out at all because hunting is a common pass time in these parts. Many of the fashion trends declared as faux pas by the carry permit holder crowd are actually quite common amongst the general population. I can shuffle through an airport, mall, or city downtown in a 5.11 tuxedo with a Multicam backpack covered in MOLLE webbing and attract little to no attention. However, I can stomp through the same airport, mall, or city downtown in jeans and a t-shirt and attracted more attention. I just have to change my behavior.

If you spent some time people watching, you’ll notice a few trends. Most people look down at the ground as they walk. A lot of people wear earbuds in public and many more are glued to their phone. I once watched a girl whose eyes were glued to her phone walk into a moving car in a Menard’s parking lot. She was lucky that the driver noticed her and stopped the car before she hit him. Many, if not most, people are in varying states of overweight. The people who stick out are the ones who look up and forward as they walk, are obviously aware of their surroundings, and are in good physical shape. In other words, the people who practice all of the things self-defense classes teach are the people who stick out regardless of how they dress.

The gray man as typically discussed in carry permit holder circles is fudd lore. You cannot simultaneously be a gray man and practice good self-defense principles because the behavior of people who practice good self-defense principles causes them to stick out. But I’m also here to tell you that it doesn’t matter. Going back to my remark about being able to attract attention wearing jeans and a t-shirt, I specifically said more attention, not a lot of attention. This is because, short of running around screaming racist slurs (simply screaming is unlikely to attract much attention as most people work to ignore it) with my hair on fire, it’s difficult to attract much attention because most people are oblivious to their surroundings. They’re not just passively oblivious either. They actively work to remain oblivious. They wear earbuds to deafen themselves. They stare at their phones to blind themselves. They do everything they can to not have any awareness of what’s happening around them.

The good news is that you’re a gray man to the general population no matter what you do. The only people likely to notice you are other carry permit holders and bad guys. Being noticed by other carry permit holders usually isn’t a big deal. You might make a new friend (or you might sucked into a No True Gray Man discussion). Being noticed by a bad guy isn’t necessarily a problem either. The main point of practicing good self-defense principles is to signal that you’re a hard target. The reason for signaling this is because most bad guys are looking for soft targets. A bad guy noticing you and identifying you as a hard target is a typically a good thing because it will often dissuade them from choosing you as a victim. Even if a bad guy decides to target you first because you’re a potential hindrance to his ability to target others nearby, the fact that you’re practicing good self-defense principles improves your survivability. If you were blending in with the general population, if you were actively preventing yourself from being aware of your surroundings, you would have zero chance of identifying the bad guy beforehand and would therefore have no chance to defend yourself.

Don’t let yourself get suckered into believing that a change of wardrobe will allow you to achieve gray man status. If you practice good self-defense principles, you’re going to stick out no matter what you wear. Wear what you like to wear. Carry backpacks that you like to carry. Walk how you like to walk. Enjoy your life.

Bring Enough Gun

A story making the rounds illustrates the importance of ensuring that you have enough gun:

A large bull moose spent more than an hour stomping on the sled dog team of a rookie Iditarod musher in the wilds of Alaska last week – and the attack didn’t end even after Bridgett Watkins emptied her gun into the animal.

[…]

‘As he charged me I emptied my gun into him and he never stopped,’ she wrote on Facebook. ‘I ran for my life and prayed I was fast enough to not be killed in that moment. He trampled the team and then turned for us.’

[…]

She did carry a .380 caliber gun because there are few people where she trains, and she keeps it to to deter or scare off animals. She has since upgraded to a larger caliber firearm after it didn’t stop the moose.

A bull moose is basically a freight train on legs that is fueled by rage. Shooting one with a .380 will just piss it off. In Watson’s defense, she wasn’t foolish enough to believe that a .380 would drop a moose. She carried it assuming that the noise it created would be sufficient to scare off an attacking animal.

So this story illustrates two important consideration when creating a self-defense plan. First, recognize the threats and bring sufficient firepower to deal with those threats. Second, if your plan includes deterrence (which it should), have a backup plan in case it doesn’t work.

Consider the self-defense plan one might establish in a city. Your primary threat will likely be humans. That means calibers like 9mm, .45 ACP, 5.56x45mm, and 7.62x39mm are sufficient in most cases. Pepper spray is a non-lethal option that is often sufficient to dissuade an attacking human. In a city your defensive plan might include a 9mm handgun and a small canister of pepper spray.

Now consider the wilderness in the Upper Midwest. While humans are still a threat in the wilderness, they’re much less common in the wilderness and smaller than some other threats. If you go to the northern parts of Minnesota, you might encounter moose. Throughout much of the Upper Midwest there are also black bears. Both are larger than humans and require more firepower to reliably drop. Therefore, your self-defense strategy might include a .357 magnum, .44 magnum, or 12 gauge shotgun loaded with slugs. Run of the mill pepper spray won’t be sufficient, which is why bear mace exists. In the wilderness of the Upper Midwest your defensive plan might include a .44 magnum revolver and a canister of bear mace.

Obviously a gun and chemical irritant aren’t a complete self-defense plan. There are many other components including a plan to deal with injuries (which is even more critical in the wilderness where emergency services are often unavailable). However, like every other part of your plan, your lethal and non-lethal tools need to match the environment.

The Rittenhouse Trial

Because I started my blogging “career” as a gun blogger, the fact that I haven’t posted about the Rittenhouse case may have surprised a few longtime readers. However, I chose to refrain from commenting about it because I wanted to have access to all of the evidence before making an ass out of myself (better to be an ass who analyzed the evidence than an ass who didn’t).

Fortunately, the entire trial was livestreamed. Rather than listen to my usual assortment of podcasts while I worked, I opted to listen to the livestream of the trial. This gave me the opportunity to hear both the prosecution’s and defense’s cases. Based on the cases put forth I agree with the jury’s decision to find Rittenhouse not guilty on all charges.

A quick browsing of Twitter shows that a lot of people disagree with the jury’s verdict. It also shows me that many of the people expressing the strongest opinions, as is the tradition of online debates, didn’t watch the trial and misunderstand how the justice system in the United States is supposed to work (which is different than how it often works).

Let’s start with what I consider to be one of the most important characteristics of a functional justice system: presumption of innocence. When the state brings charges against an individual, the individual is assumed to be innocent. This means that the burden is placed on the state to prove the individual is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. If you watched the trial, you saw how weak the prosecution’s case was. By the end of the trial the prosecution was leaning almost exclusively on video captured from a drone. The prosecution claimed that the video showed Rittenhouse aiming his rifle at people. This according to the prosecution proved that Rittenhouse instigated the situation and therefore lost the right to claim self-defense. Setting aside the minutia of self-defense law (what qualifies as instigation, when you lose the right to claim self-defense, when you regain the right to claim self-defense, etc.) the drone footage didn’t conclusively show Rittenhouse aiming his gun at people, which means the evidence didn’t prove the prosecution’s argument beyond a reasonable doubt.

I’m highlighting the drone footage because it allows me to segue into another point: trials have rules. A lot of rules. One rule is that the defense must be given access to the prosecution’s evidence. The prosecution provided the defense with a compressed copy of the drone footage. The defense brought this up in trial. A lot of online publications tried to make this sounds like the defense was desperate, but it was raising legitimate concerns about artifacts that are introduced when video files are compressed. Miraculously the prosecution produced a higher resolution version of the video footage and asked to show it to the jury… without first give the defense reasonable time to analyze it. This lead to the defense filing a motion for mistrial. Again online publications tried to make the motion sound like a desperate last ditch effort by a losing defense, but in actuality the motion was filed because the prosecution broke the rules.

This segues into a third point. Judges are basically referees. They ensure both the defense and prosecution (as well as everybody else in the courtroom) play by the rules. A lot of people accused the judge of (amongst other things) being biased in favor of the defense. Having watched the trial I can’t agree with those accusations. The judge came off to me as being pretty fair. Some of his actions did favor the defense, but some of his actions also favored the prosecution. The most obvious action he took that favored the prosecution was not declaring a mistrial (I believe the motion for a mistrial had merit and the judge would have been well within his rights to declare a mistrial).

These are just a few highlights that I chose to explain some of the important features of a trial. In truth the prosecution made a pitiful showing. Not only did it bring a weak case, but it violated some major rules (bringing up the fact Rittenhouse choice to exercise is Fifth Amendment right, which is a big no-no for a prosecutor, being one of the more egregious violations).

So, despite what many Twitter users seem to believe, a criminal trial is not meant to be a mere formality that enacts the desires of the loudest majority. It’s meant to be a strictly defined process to determine whether a person is guilty of a crime. While you’ll find no shortage of criticisms of the United States justice system coming from me, in this case I believe that the trial was executed more or less appropriately and the verdict was correct based on the arguments made by the defense and prosecution.

What annoys me most about this case is that even though the video footage of the entire trial is readily available on sites like YouTube, people will continue to spout falsehoods about it and the events that lead up to it. I still see a lot of tweets claiming that Rittenhouse illegally crossed state lines with his rifle or was illegally in possession of the rifle because he was a minor (those who watched the trial know that neither statement is correct). I also see a lot of tweets accusing the judge of being biased or a white supremacist (which mostly derive from a joke he made about Asian food that was actually, and pretty obviously in context, a joke about the current supply chain issues). Nothing the judge said during the trial leads me to believe he’s a white supremacist (and considering all three of the individuals Rittenhouse shot were white, I’m not sure why this is something people are wasting so much bandwidth arguing) and, as I wrote previously, his actions didn’t indicate any obvious bias.

The Police Aren’t Coming

A law enforcer killed a black man in Atlanta and is being charged. This has ruffled the feathers of many other law enforcers in the city and now they’re coming down with the blue flu:

Hours after the Fulton County district attorney announced felony murder and other charges against the former Atlanta police officer who fatally shot Rayshard Brooks, a 27-year-old black man, in the back, a number of Atlanta police officers called in sick just before a shift change Wednesday evening.

A lot of people argue that nobody needs tools to protect themselves because if they’re in danger, they can call the police. I along with many (probably most) other advocates for gun ownership have argued that you can’t rely on other people to protect you. This argument often falls on deaf eras. Even when you point out that law enforcers have no duty to protect you, gun control advocates will argue that a cop isn’t going to just stand by and let something bad happen to an innocent person.

The recent civil unrest that started in Minneapolis has done a wonderful job of illustrating that law enforcement departments can easily become overwhelmed and when they’re overwhelmed they don’t send resources to protect you or your business. Atlanta is now illustrating the fact that there are circumstances where law enforcers will refuse to show up for work. As with Minneapolis just a short while ago, it appears that the people of Atlanta are on their own.

This is why defense in depth is such an important concept. You want redundant self-defense plans in case any single plan fails. This is especially true if any of your plans rely on anybody but yourself to execute (the only person you can 100 percent rely on is yourself because that’s the only person whose actions you can control).

Hey Siri, I’m Getting Pulled Over

Do you carry an iPhone? If so, is it updated to iOS 12? If you answered yes to both, there’s a very useful tool you can download:

There’s a big new feature for iPhone experts this year: It’s an app called Shortcuts, and with a little bit of logic and know-how, you can stitch together several apps and create a script that can be activated by pressing a button or using Siri.

[…]

But Robert Petersen of Arizona has developed a more serious shortcut: It’s called Police, and it monitors police interactions so you have a record of what happened.

Once the shortcut is installed and configured, you just have to say, for example, “Hey Siri, I’m getting pulled over.” Then the program pauses music you may be playing, turns down the brightness on the iPhone, and turns on “do not disturb” mode.

You can download the shotcut here.

I’ve downloaded it and tested it. Sure enough it works as advertised. Grab it and install it on your phone so it’s ready if you get pulled over.

Sometimes Violence Is the Only Thing People Understand

I tend to favor leaving over deescalation and deescalation over violence. However, there are times when leaving isn’t an option and deescalation isn’t possible. In those situations violence can be the only solution:

What happened next, however, was road rage to the extent Bowlin had never in her life witnessed.

“The one time I leave a little too much space for the car in front of me, he then proceeds to go onto the shoulder and try to ram me with his car on the passenger side of his car, on the left side of my bike and with my left leg, into the cars … to the right of us, which would be considered the fast lane,” she told KIRO Radio’s Dori Monson.

The driver, identified as 60-year-old Bruce Jones, repeated this action a couple of times, as Bowlin tried to get away. Jones’ wife was in the passenger seat the entire time; Bowlin observed that she had a shocked expression.

[…]

In the fetal position against the barrier as Jones weighed down on her, Bowlin began to slip in and out of consciousness due to the tightness of her helmet’s chin strap. Bowlin realized in her lucid moments that Jones was going to choke her to death.

“If he had gotten my helmet off, I would’ve been dead,” she said.

It was at this point that Bowlin suddenly remembered that she had a firearm. She knew that she had to save her life.

“It was me or him,” Bowlin said. “And I was coming home.”

She managed to pull her gun out of her jacket and fire, hitting Jones in the abdomen.

These are the situations that gun control advocates seem unable to comprehend. Bowlin was in a bad situation. She couldn’t flee and her attacker, who had given her plenty of reason to believe that he intended to kill her, was physically superior to her. If she was unarmed, she likely would have died. However, she was armed and therefore able to overcome the physical disparity that existed between her and her attacker.

Sometimes there is no avenue for escape. Sometimes your attacker isn’t in a reasonable state of mind and therefore cannot be talked out of their aggression. Sometimes situations only offer you the choice of fighting and living or dying. I very much wish this wasn’t the case but, unfortunately, my wishes have so far been unable to alter the universe I occupy.

A Proper Response

I’m of the opinion that everybody should have the best means available to them to defend themselves. I believe having the best means of self-defense available is especially important for those who may face violence because of who they are. People who fall under the LGBT label, for example, have a higher chance of being attacked, which is why stories like this warm my heart:

“I don’t want to get beaten to death, stabbed and burnt alive,” a slight woman with long blond hair and a checked shirt says. “I want a gun to feel equal.”

She is a member of one of the United States’ fastest-growing gun clubs, the jauntily named Pink Pistols.

Two years after the massacre at Orlando’s Pulse nightclub, gay, lesbian and transgender Americans are nervous. According to the Human Rights Center (HRC), a US LGBTI advocacy group, 52 gay people were murdered in the US last year because of their sexuality, and 28 transgender people met the same fate.

Of course, gun control advocates will say that these individuals shouldn’t need a means of self-defense. I do agree with that sentiment. However, I don’t believe that people should operate under ideas of what they believe should or shouldn’t be the case, they should operate under what is the case. What is the case is that there are people who will attack and even murder individuals for their sexuality and gender identity. Furthermore, if individuals who fall under the LGBT umbrella continue to arm themselves, they will likely create an environment where they are less likely to be attacked.

Some Days Aren’t Your Days

Some days are destined to not be your days. That’s probably how Christopher Raymond Hill felt a few days ago:

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. (WSVN) — Police say a man who tried to carjack two people was thwarted after the victims both pulled out guns to protect themselves.

What kind of America do I want to live in? One where a carjacker tries to carjack two separate vehicles and gets a gun pulled on him by both would-be victims.

It’s also worth noting that Florida has castle doctrine. According to gun control advocates, castle doctrine leads to the streets overflowing with blood due to all of the people legally shooting each other. Even though Hill was posing an immediate threat to the lives of the people he was trying to carjack, neither one of them gunned him down. Despite what gun control advocates often claim, most people aren’t looking for an excuse to gun another human being down. In fact most people seem to prefer avoiding violence if necessary. It is only when pushed into a corner that most people are likely to retaliate violently and even then the general preference appears to be avoiding violence is possible.

I’ve Been Told this Never Happens

Whenever a gun control advocate is demanding that innocent gun owners be punished after a mass shooting, gun rights advocates point out that individuals carrying guns are the best defense against mass shootings. Usually this results in the gun control advocate claiming that such an event never happens:

An armed citizen gunned down a shooter at an Oklahoma City restaurant on Thursday, killing him, police said.

A man walked into Louie’s Grill & Bar and opened fire, striking two people. As the gunman was fleeing the scene, a bystander armed with a pistol confronted the shooter and fatally shot him outside the restaurant, Oklahoma City Police Captain Bo Mathews told reporters.

“Right now, all I know is that it was just a good Samaritan that was there and looks like he took the right measures to be able to put an end to a terrible, terrible incident,” Mathews said.

Since it’s CNN, I’m not surprised that the article used the verbiage “gunned down” but the fact that CNN ran this story at all is a bit surprisingly.

The key to reducing casualties in a mass shooting scenario is response time. The sooner armed resistance can be made against the shooter, the sooner the shooter will either kill themselves (a very common result in mass shooting scenarios) or disregard bystanders as they fight for their life. The fastest possible response time comes from somebody at the location when the shooting begins, which means the best way to decrease the number of casualties caused by a mass shooter is to allow individuals to carry a firearm on their person so that there’s a higher probability of an armed individual being at the location when the shooting starts.

Learning Lessons the Hard Way

I’d imagine that most of you were taught to keep your hands to yourself at a pretty young age. I certainly was. However, some people can only learn this lesson the hard way:

A woman jogging Friday morning in Salt Lake City fought back against a man who came up behind her and groped her.

She was attacked about 6 a.m. in a neighborhood near 1700 South and 500 East, Salt Lake City police spokesman Greg Wilking said.

The woman was carrying a small knife in her hand and stabbed the man multiple times when he grabbed her.

And a valuable lesson was taught.

With sexual assault so prevalent in the news, it’s nice to read a story about how high the cost of sexual assault can be. The biggest enable of sexual assault is likely the extremely low cost of perpetuating it. Sexual assaults often face no physical or legal consequences. If sexual assaulters were commonly beaten, stabbed, or shot, the cost of perpetuating sexual assault might be high enough where would-be sexual assaulters would reconsider their actions.